Maybe you have seen unknown errors during installs or just crap lying around from previous uninstalls? Maybe an installation did not complete and now you can not uninstall or re-install it? How do you deal with these situations?
Well Microsoft has released a tool aimed at making your life easier. This 351KB file will help you clean out all of these problems.
You do have to install the application. After the usual next, next, next, finish you will be ready to use the tool. When you run it for the first time you will see this:
You can browse through the list of what Windows thinks is installed. Most of the entries looked correct to me. Then I spotted one:
Twingly Screensaver which I installed a while back and shortly thereafter un-installed was still hanging out with my legit programs. This seems like a good test and I selected the item and hit Remove. I quickly got a warning message popping up on my screen:
It says: Warning – All products selected will be removed from the Windows Installer database. In order for the products to work properly you must individually re-install all products selected. Selected OK to continue removing product, Cancel to abort.
I was sure of what I was doing so I hit OK. A DOS box popped up and disappeared quickly but I managed to grab a screen shot of some of the commands scrolling by as you can see here:
It runs through the registry using command line options to search and remove registry items associated with your application and then it grabs and deletes shared dll’s and other files. It worked quite nicely.
We have featured some other uninstallation / clean up tools in the past. Mac users can see Jeffry’s post here and we also have a couple of other Windows alternatives, one from Jimmy and another from Stefan.
Do you have a favorite all in one clean up utility that does the dirty work for you? If you do please let us know in the comments!
Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!
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